Small Town Where Disney’s Halloweentown Was Filmed Brings the Movie Back to Life Every Year

Halloweentown is a Disney Channel original movie that debuted in 1998. The movie was a success and led Disney to create three more movies in the franchise.

The majority of the first movie was shot in a small sleepy town, which has now leaned into the movie’s lore and created a yearly celebration that brings to life many of the iconic areas from the film during the weekends leading up to Halloween. We went to this Spirit of Halloweentown celebration to share all of the fun with you.

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Spirit of Halloweentown Based on Disney Movie

During a trolley tour of the town, we learned that initially, Halloweentown was going to be made by NBC for $30-40 million, and would be much scarier. Disney acquired it and gave it a budget of $4 million instead, which led to the lighter, more family-friendly version that we see today.

That lower budget led the team to be very frugal in how they approached shooting the movie. One of the location scouts immediately thought of his small hometown as a potential place to shoot the entire thing. He suggested they look at Saint Helens, Oregon, as the location for Halloweentown.

The Spirit of Halloweentown transforms the town of Saint Helens, Oregon, back into the setting for the movie. Much of the original Halloweentown movie was shot right here, and the town takes pride in recreating the iconic main square setting from the movie for the event each year.

Located about 30 minutes from Portland, Oregon, this small town uses the Halloweentown iconic location as a jumping-off point to create a lovely autumn festival that is a perfect weekend activity. My sister and I recently visited the town to check out this fun offering.

Exploring Spirit of Halloweentown

There are a couple of different aspects of the Spirit of Halloweentown festival. Some parts of the experience are paid and others are not.

Seeing a replica of the big pumpkin from the movie standing in front of the actual city hall was a surreal experience. I have loved watching this series of family-friendly Halloween movies growing up, and I highly recommend you watch them on Disney+ if you haven’t seen them yet.

The entire town square was decorated for Halloween to look just like the main area from the movie. In the square, there were roaming performers who brought this area to life. Music from the movie and other Halloween music played in the background.

There was even the taxi cab that Benny the skeleton drives the kids around in, complete with a replica of Benny himself.

Down the street is the movie theater where part of the battle with the evil Kalabar takes place. This is an active theater, but you can see the outside marquee.

There is clearly a cult following that agrees with me, because there were tons of people very excited about the experience. Many lined up for a paid photo experience with Kimberly J. Brown, the star who played Marnie as a kid, and Daniel Kountz, her now husband, who also played the young Kalabar in the second movie. Each weekend, there are star photo sessions as part of an extra ticket charge.

Each night at 8:30 pm, there is a lighting of the big pumpkin. On Saturday night, we heard that the two stars who were in town led the lighting ceremony by saying the magic words used in the movie. The music from the movie plays, and the pumpkin glows to life. Hundreds of people filled the square to see the ceremony.

We spoke to some people who came a very long way to take in the experience. We happened to already be in Portland, Oregon, so this was a nice day activity. I’m not sure how far I would travel for the event. Some reviews of the event claim that they were underwhelmed. I disagree with this overall, but I can see the critique for some of the paid elements. I felt that everything we saw delivered at pretty much exactly what I was expecting. This is a fall festival that also happens to be home to an iconic movie shooting location.

In addition to seeing these main sights, the festival has a fun row of Halloween-themed vendors and food trucks.

There is also a family-friendly haunted house that was largely filled with props you might find to dress up your front yard. There were a couple of fun scenes in here with cool props, but this was unrelated to the Halloweentown movies.

Upstairs in that building was an alien-themed walkthrough and exhibit with “creepies and crawlies” that included snakes and spiders.

In the same building as the haunted house was a shop with very cute merchandise. Check out the shirt below.

There was also a tent with a DJ. Outside, there was pumpkin bowling and a straw maze that was fun for kids.

In the tent, there was a bar with very cute Halloween-themed cocktails.

Finally, there was a fun trolley tour with a delightful host, who gave us a quick 30-minute loop tour of the town, pointing out different filming locations and sharing more about the filming in the town.

On the tour, we also saw some highlights of locations where they filmed some of the movies from the Twilight franchise. We saw Bella’s house and a house that was transformed into a restaurant for one of the films.

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Visiting Spirit of Halloweentown

During the first weekends, they expect to welcome 15,000-20,000 people each day, and during the last two weekends, they expect to welcome 40,000-50,000 people each day. There are a lot of people coming into this small town for this event.

When I read how many people come to this event, I changed our plans around so that we wouldn’t be caught in massive crowds. We arrived right before the event actually started at 11 am. This allowed us to easily get parking just off the main square. We walked around for two hours and saw all of the highlights of the town. The only thing we really missed was the pumpkin lighting. Maybe next time.

Most aspects of the festival run from 11 am to 9 pm.

Seeing the main sights in the town was completely free and open to the public. Anyone can walk around in the main square and see the little magic shows and performances that take place on a stage there. You can also take a photo with the pumpkin and look at all the vendors.

The Haunted House, alien experience, DJ area, celebrity meeting, and trolley tour are all ticketed experiences. Proceeds from the event support other community events in St. Helens throughout the year. The all-in ticket price is $49 for adults and $28 for kids. Though none of these experiences felt essential, the trolley tour was the most fun because of our great guide.

The main unpaid part of the festival is by far the coolest part. I really love this photo in front of the pumpkin seen below. You can easily skip paying the extra money for the experiences. For diehard fans, getting a photo with the stars could also be a fun splurge. I felt you could skip the Haunted House and other areas.

If you are not one of the first people to get to the event, you’ll have to use remote parking lots with shuttles. There is a fee for parking in those lots.

Seeing the Halloweentown shooting location was a ton of fun and a great way to kick off the Halloween season. The festival atmosphere was also a perfect addition to the central event area. You could easily come here just to enjoy the festival without purchasing a ticket if you are not interested in some of the aspects of the festival. The offering delivers an interesting look at the place where this fun Halloween movie was filmed for diehard fans and a great fall feeling for everyone.

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We were provided tickets by the organizers to come see this event, but all opinions are our own. We always share our honest opinion of what we cover.